What is Token Economies?

In plain English a token economy can be summarised by the following two points.

A token economy is a system in which an individual earns tokens for
engaging in agreed upon desirable behaviors and/or refraining from or
decreasing certain undesirable behaviors

The individual subsequently has the opportunity to trade earned tokens for access to desired items or activities.

Token economies are one of the most flexible and effective behavior management strategies
that can be used to motivate and reinforce human behavior. When used
properly token economies can help parents, teachers, carers, employers
and anyone else who has ever thought or uttered the words ' help me with my kids'
, to increase motivation, to improve compliance, to learn new skills,
to follow rules, to refrain from breaking rules and much more.They can
also teach about and provide people with goals to strive for, a sense of
achievement and accomplishment and a predictable way to access desired
items and/or activities.

Do token economies really work?

Absolutely they do and they are one of the most powerful long term
behavior management strategies that you can possibly use.The greatest
example of a token economy ever devised and put into place is ‘money’.
Everyday in almost every part of the world people are actively taking
part in this type of token economy whereby they usually perform
various ‘work tasks’ in exchange for pieces of colored paper and small
metal discs or coins or more commonly nowadays electronically generated
digits in their bank accounts .

The power of the token economy that is ‘money’ lies in the wide (almost
infinite) variety of ways in which people can exchange these tokens for
access to desired items and activities such as food, clothes, cars,
homes, holidays, services, entertainment, security, education and so
forth. This flexibility ensures the power and position of money as the
ultimate token reinforcer for most people. Surely this is all the
evidence we need to show how powerful token economies can be at motivating and reinforcing human behavior.

Two factors which heavily influence the dynamics of token economies in general however are:

The desirability of the items and activities on offer:
Having rewards that are sufficiently desired by and thus motivating to
the individuals concerned is paramount to the success of any token
economy system. If the individual has little or no interest in the
‘reinforcers’ being offered they will clearly not be motivated to engage
in the target behaviours no matter how elaborate, attractive or
sophisticated your system otherwise is.

The effort-reward ratio: If you expect too
much and/or offer too little you will have little success. This dynamic
is even more important when you first introduce a new system. Initially
you should make things easy so as to facilitate success and encourage
the individual’s engagement with the new system.

Note:
I have often heard people state that they’ve tried token economies or
positive reinforcement and that it doesn’t work. This is often because
people lose sight of the distinction between a reward and a reinforcer
(even if they’re not familiar with the latter term).

A reward could be described as anything you provide to someone as a
result of them engaging in a particular behaviour. A reward only assumes
the status of or becomes a reinforcer however if it leads to an
increase in the targeted behaviour or the maintenance of an already
established behaviour/s .e.g. if your boss was to offer or ‘reward’ you
with a small pebble or a grain of sand say, for every additional 10
minutes work you completed at the end of your normal day’s work this is
unlikely to motivate most people to stay back too late.

However if that same boss was to offer an additional days wages for
every extra 10 minutes work or perhaps an additional weeks or even
months wages for that same 10 minutes the compliance levels would surely
go through the roof. The point being that frequently if a token economy
is not working (assuming the principles are understood by the
individuals concerned and the criteria for success are within the
individual’s range of abilities) it is as a result of either expecting
too much for too little or because what’s on offer is not at all or not
sufficiently motivating for the individual concerned and not because the
principles behind token economies or positive reinforcement don’t work –
If in doubt just remember the expression ‘money makes the world go
round?’ That’s only because token economies work!!